Step One in Building Your Personal Brand: Get Online!
As my regular readers may know, I give all kinds of step-by-steps on the specific points of building your personal brand. But I was thinking recently, what about the basics? And those people out there that are established but have no idea where to begin? How about those that aren’t quite ready for the headshots and professional bios, and press kits? And those that have no real presence to speak of quite yet but are aspiring to build an empire, brick by brick? Well, this one my friends, is for you. This is going to be a sweet little mini-blog series. Easy, actionable, and hopefully helpful!
Your Personal Brand Needs A Presence Online
If you don’t exist online, you kind of don’t exist at all. It’s kind of like the old tree falling in the forest thing. And you want that presence to be as easy to find as possible. You don’t want to be a wallflower at the dance when you’re trying to get noticed. The easiest way to do this is by being active on social media. And eventually you’ll work towards things like increasing your Google index rating, Search Engine Optimization, and building your follower count. But for now, you just need to get out there!
Dress (your social media) for the Job You Want, Not the Job You Have
Now, you may already have personal social media accounts, and that’s great! But do your current accounts reflect the YOU, you want to be? If not, it’s time to edit them. Or better yet, create new ones. Even if you haven’t started your business, or service, or blog yet, start creating those accounts. You can leave them inactive for the moment. Trust me, this will save you time later. And as a bonus, your established/joined date will appear to have been around longer. Because the fact is, someone is going to Google you or check your social media eventually, and getting no information is almost worse than getting bad information.
Ah, the old standby. It works for some things better than others but the point here is just having a presence. So, go ahead and get started. Tip: Either set your personal account to private or delete anything you wouldn’t want associated with ‘Public’ you.
Update: Facebook has made some changes lately, and they’re really pushing Facebook Groups, so you may want to check into creating a group for your brand/book/business.
It’s super easy to create a business page on Facebook. Here are the easy steps from the source itself.
The whole world is on Twitter. It’s such a good platform with the potential for a huge reach if you use the right available tools. So go ahead. Get on there! You don’t have to start tweeting yet. I’ll help you out with that later in this series. Here’s the official How-To of setting up a business profile on Twitter.
Instagram can be a tough one and it just doesn’t work that well for certain services but if you’re creative and love telling a story through images you should definitely be on it. Here’s the link for you to sign up for Instagram Business.
So, Wait, Why Are You Doing This Right NOW?
The reason I’m telling you to just get on there and spend the time to set these up, even if you don’t have a business name yet, or know what your brand is, is that I’m hoping this will be an exercise in forcing yourself to get creative. That the mere act of putting in the energy to start this will inspire you to begin brainstorming ideas. And ideas bring forth more ideas!
So, as Nike says just do it! You don’t have to do it all now. But try one account today. See where it takes your ideas on what your future will be!
